The Knife

In 2014, The Knife (Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer) along with a cavalcade of collaborators staged the final live performances of the Shaking the Habitual: the Show at Terminal 5 in NYC. Joining the project, I directed the concert film.

Similarly to the collaborative nature of the album and show, those behind the camera blurred the lines between usual roles. Those collaborators included Michael Berlucchi, Kelly Gilpatrick, Tyler Jensen, Victoria Keddie, Tom Richmond and Mark Zemel.

Billed as the end of The Knife, the concert film captured the culmination of a unique project that reconsidered what making an album, putting on a show, or making movie might be.

THE FUN

Surveying the evolving nature of nightlife in New York City, THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC is a first-of-its-kind publication, documenting the new forms of nightlife practitioners to emerge since the turn of the millennium. Through profiles of over 25 artists, including the royalty of Manhattan nightlife like Susanne Bartshce and Ladyfag; hybrid forms like Xtapussy and FCKNLZ; the continuation of minimal wave and goth communities through Pendu Disco; and the vibrant queer scenes of JUDY, Frankie Sharp, and My Chiffon is Wet, THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC documents the rich contemporary cultural activity keeping NYC as weird and innovative as decades past. Accompanying these profiles are essays by a range of voices in the nightlife, including artists Rob Roth, Genesis P-Orridge, and Michael Alig, curators and critics Maria Lind, Claire Bishop, and Jake Yuzna, as well as journalist Michael Musto providing both historical context and contemporary understanding of nightlife as a vital artistic practice that has been marginalized by the arts sector for hundreds of years.

THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC traces the history of nightlife as it has evolved, from the explosion of large and small discos throughout the 1970s like Studio 54, which paved the way for 80s megaclubs; the candy-colored club kid movement of Michael Alig and the Limelight in the early 90s; the parallel expansion of the boundary shattering merger of drag, performance, and music in downtown venues such as the Pyramid Club and Mother; the rise of Brooklyn as a new focal point in the 2000s with the emergence of Luxx, Secret Project Robot, Silent Barn and other hybrid arts/music/nightlife venues; and on into the many vibrant and emergent forms found today.

THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC celebrates the immense originality and impact of this unique artistic practice, one that is created once social norms are left at the door and debauchery ensues in the wickedly creative corners of NYC that only emerge when the sun has set.

Open

New forms of sex and love emerge in the first American film to ever win the Teddy jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival, OPEN.

When the young hermaphrodite Cynthia (Gaea Gaddy) meets Gen (Tempest Crane) and Jay (Jendeen Forberg), a couple recovering from plastic surgery, she learns of Pandrogony, in which two people merge their facial features in order to reflect their evolution from separate identities into one unified entity.

Inspired by this, Cynthia abandons her husband and suburban life to embark on a road trip with Gen through the remnants of 20th century America.
Simultaneously, a young transman, Syd (Morty Diamond), meets a young punk man, Nick (Daniel Luedtke). After having sex with one another, and someone born of the opposite sex for the first time, Syd and Nick find themselves falling into love, a love that forces them to confront how hormone treatments have forever changed sex and relationships.

Not science fiction, but American reality OPEN brings together a cast of real hermaphroditic, pandrogynous, and transpeople to create a revealing look at the pioneers of the new human experience, and the emerging possibilities for humanity at the dawn of a new millennium.

2014 MAD Biennial

The inaugural biennial at the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC Makers: the MAD Biennial surveyed culture being produced across the five boroughs of New York City. Through the inclusion of 100 participants, the project expanded upon exhibition, programatic, and publishing models to present a large variety of modes of production on the same hierarchical level.

Employing the term “maker,” the biennial examined how the act of production linked these diverse activities. Through this approach, the project utilizes the institution of the museum to reconsider the large-scale collaborative undertaking of over 13 millions people that is the cultural capital of New York.

NYC Makers: the MAD Biennial was presented from July 1 - October 12, 2014 and included an accompanying process book.

winkwink

Highlighting how digital processes have reshaped our relationships to art, design, and making, the research project ;) gathered writings, interactive media, design, and web projects to reveal new tools for gathering and arranging information has made visible our ways of thinking.

Presented as an exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design, projects ranging from pre-digital design education strategies by Enzo Mari to early interactive installations and pioneering curatorial uses of blogs and websites, ;) explored whether these practices enable critical and reflective uses of imported material. Or whether this open source sharing has done little to foster the creation of a critical publicness.

Together these works highlighted visual culture's increasing dominance in daily life, altering not only what we make but how we think and feel. We grow more :) than happy, more :( than sad, and more :/ about the immense amount of visual information we encounter every day.

;) was presented from September, 2013 - May, 2014.

After the Museum

Transforming the physical and contextual environment of the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC into a focal point for the reconsideration of cultural production, the museum-wide project After the Museum utilized the institution as a platform for launching new, radical and unorthodox proposals for contemporary art and design museums in the 21st century.

Gathering a variety of unique American voices in the fields of art and design, After the Museum explored the effects and possibilities that have come to light after the rise of the contemporary art and design museum.

As artists, designers, and corporations have increasingly begun to stage exhibitions, lectures, and workshops modeled from the role of museums in the 20th century, current museum forms are increasingly called into question.

Reacting to this new cultural reality, After the Museum staged and presented a series of ore 55 commissioned installations, programs, publications, and digital tools that reveal the largely hidden research component of the design practice, while examining cultural institution's role in the shaping of design and culture past, present, and future.

The Future is Medieval Today

IFP Media Center presents an exhibition of new media work by Jake Yuzna. Exploring striking develops in storytelling today, these works link together diverse subjects ranging from the 2014 attempted murder of a classmate by 12-year old Wisconsin girls looking to appease the online meme "Slender Man," the most cinematically adapted story and book (Cinderella and the Bible), JonBenét Ramsey wrapping paper, The Gutenberg Parenthesis and more. Together these works present a portrait of the fluidity of storytelling in cinema today and how its present appears to be as much from the future as the past.

Strategies For Cultural Production

Presented to students at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as visiting artist, the lecture Strategies for Cultural Production focused on the evolution of creative methodologies, the structures of studio practices, and the emergence of cultural producers.

An Assault of Reality

Curated for the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, the cinema program An Assault of Reality surveyed 109 years of cinema history. Bringing together unexpected combinations of works that contrast various approaches by artists from around the world, An Assault of Reality revealed the evolution of this artistic practice into a dominant force for the construction of what we know to be reality.

From Michael Haneke + Walt Disney, George Melies + MTV, and Andrei Tarkovsky + CNN An Assault of Reality brought together a wide range of cinematic productions to explore the evolution of the discipline and how it has evolved humanity's structuring of perception and existence.

Rabbit Holy Days

Teaming with artist Terence Koh and Creative Time, I produced the video Rabbit Holy Days as part of Standard Hotel's StandART initiative.